Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Retirement Plans

June 15, 2016 11:59 AM - Season 3, Episode 15

This week....

• Cold open, without an audience, in which John Oliver discusses the shooting in Orlando. YouTube (2m)
• Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic Party's presumptive candidate for US President, and gets involved in a Twitter scuffle with Donald Trump. Part 1 - Part 2 LWT provides a GIF of a vomiting Abraham Lincoln.
• And Now: People on Television Asking You to Imagine Things
• Main story: Retirement plans and how many people are charged fees far exceeding what they expect. (Here are LWT's print-out certificates of Elf Spotting and Financial Planning.) It ends with a piece offering LWT found to be the best, simplest way to manage your 401K: low-fee index funds, and gradually moving money from stocks to bonds over time. YouTube (21m)

• Election 2016: "The Fiery Two-Party Pileup on the Hellbound Fuckspressway."
• Donald Trump: "An ego-goblin who feasts on verbal filth."

Opening graphic: A rainbow-colored image of the state of Florida, captioned "F.37 Florida," and "Solidaritus."

Oliver's guessed-at replacement teen Twitter catchphrases: "Eat a gerbil," "Snap it up Snoopy," "Not in my taco truck!"

posted by JHarris (6 comments total)

I felt like this was the first main story where I'd already heard literally everything he brings up, but at the same time I'm not going to complain about more Billy Eichner and Kristin Chenoweth being weird together.
posted by psoas at 2:05 PM on June 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, Eichner & Chenoweth saved the bit, tho (as annoying as it can be) Eichner's funnier when he gets really loud and shrill. Other than those two, it was kinda boring. Oliver's long-form essay is at its best when it can rage against a particular individual or institution. A general "don't pay high rates!" doesn't really get it done.
posted by Frayed Knot at 4:57 PM on June 15, 2016

I think the retirement bit will be a big eye-opener to a lot of the younger viewers. I've been squirreling money away for years, but when I mention it to younger friends and acquaintances (usually around tax time) I find so many of them have no idea about how important it is or how to get started. This is especially true of people who work jobs without these kinds of benefits. Many don't even know they can contribute to an IRA without any kind of employer involvement and that contribution is sheltered from income tax (up to a limit, yadda yadda).
posted by axiom at 5:11 PM on June 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I disagreed with him that HRC was lowering herself with the Delete Your Account tweet.
posted by zutalors! at 9:04 PM on June 15, 2016 [5 favorites]

I thought the opener contrasting HRC's social media activity vs Trump's was just awful false equivalence. Like sometimes HRC's media team is out of touch and has an otherwise good-natured joke fall flat. Trump's on the other hand is xenophobia, racism, sexism and all kinds of mean-spiritedness. But I guess we should use a Lincoln-vomiting image for both because they're both gross.
posted by R343L at 7:58 PM on June 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

yea I was kind of surprised by that. Not that Oliver is pro Clinton or anything but he's been following Trump pretty closely. I actually thought it was a good use of Twitter to play on those terms.
posted by zutalors! at 7:42 PM on June 20, 2016